Party Chieftains With Axe To Grind Against APC: Nasir el-Rufai, torn between public good and self-interest
By Onyedika Agbedo
08 February 2025 | 5:05 am
Former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, is not new to controversies. Thus, his recent scathing criticisms of his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led Federal Government and supporters of the administration are not surprising. It only re-confirms his boldness to speak truth to power. What is unclear yet is whether his current efforts are geared towards public good or the preservation of his self interest.
el-Rufai is one of the founding members of the APC. He served as governor of Kaduna State for two-terms from 2015-2023 on the platform of the party. Before then, he had served as the deputy national secretary of the party after the merger that gave birth to it was consummated in February 2013. He actually relinquished that position in 2014 to contest the governorship primaries of the party, which he won and went on to win the 2015 governorship election, defeating Mukhtar Ramalan Yero of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) with over one million votes.
While governing Kaduna, the APC appointed him as the chairman of its committee on restructuring, which was mandated to articulate the party’s position on the agitation for restructuring. His political trajectory between 2013 and 2023 clearly indicates that he was deep-rooted in APC’s affairs.
However, after the 2023 elections, his relationship with the party became sour. Relying on a security report said to have emanated from the Department of State Services (DSS), the Senate rejected the former governor’s nomination for a ministerial position in President Tinubu’s cabinet.
Two other nominees were also affected – a former senator from Taraba, Sani Danladi, and Stella Okotete from Delta State. The President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, had announced that their confirmations would await security clearance and that was the end of the story.
But reports later emerged that making “unguarded statements” was a major thrust of the DSS report on el-Rufai. The reports had quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying that his comment after the APC candidate won the 2023 governorship election in the state, that Muslims could rule Kaduna for a long period while also consistently doing justice to Christians, was part of the DSS report. The agency was said to have concluded that el-Rufai’s public statements inflamed mistrust among the state’s citizens and, by extension, between Muslims and Christians in the country.
His comment in the build-up to the 2019 general election that foreign election observers and agents of the international community trying to meddle in Nigeria’s elections would return in body bags was also said to be part of the report that eventually denied him a space in the cabinet of the current administration.
The development temporarily silenced him in the political space. The few occasions that he commented on public affairs were to defend himself against allegations of misappropriation of Kaduna State funds during his tenure as governor. These came as a surprise to those who monitored el-Rufai’s support to Tinubu during the build up to the 2023 elections.
It could be recalled that el-Rufai was among the northern APC governors who insisted on power shift to the South after a meeting with the then president Buhari in June 2022. Before that meeting, the then national chairman of the party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, had announced former President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, as consensus candidate of the party. After the meeting with Buhari, el-Rufai featured in a Channels Television programme, ‘Politics Today’, to explain what led to the decision.
“When we saw moves by some governors and the Senate President, we got worried because we had a principle based on the party’s motto of fairness. As a region, we must adhere to our words and we had to come out unanimously, which the President supported.”
Then, during the Kaduna Economic and Investment Summit in October 2022, which Tinubu attended then as the APC presidential flagbearer, he (Tinubu) pressured el-Rufai to postpone his 2023 retirement plan, saying his government would need his services.
Tinubu had after his speech said he would not leave the stage until he gets a commitment from el-Rufai on staying in public service beyond 2023.
The former FCT minister had in May 2022, during an interview on Channels TV, said he was physically tired of carrying on after his tenure as governor. He had also announced his plan to go and pursue further studies in Egypt.
However, Tinubu said: “I am openly begging Nasir el-Rufai not to run away for additional degree and excuse. He is going to Cairo — PhD and everything. There are a lot of educated relics. We are not going to let you run away.” Tinubu then urged el-Rufai to give him a pledge to continue to serve.
“I want you to make a promise; we will not let you run away from this country. I am not leaving this stage,” he said. At that point, el-Rufai climbed the stage and promised to carry on. Thus, when the nomination of el-Rufai was stepped down by the Senate in August 2023 based on ‘security report’, the dominant belief among el-Rufai’s friends and associates was that President Tinubu ought to have rallied the lawmakers and convinced them on the significance of el-Rufai’s membership of the proposed cabinet.
So, recent developments indicate that things are fast falling apart between him and the party and the centre may never hold again. His harsh criticisms of the party and the Tinubu administration lately clearly point to that.
Speaking with journalists at the recent event organised by the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (LSD) in Abuja with the theme, ‘Strengthening Nigeria’s Democracy: Pathway to Good Governance and Political Integrity’, el-Rufai descended very heavily on the APC, even to the point of accusing the leadership of plotting to destroy the opposition parties in the country and branding those governing the country currently as illiterates.
“There seems to be a deliberate project to destroy opposition parties. There are internal mercenaries in the PDP, hired and motivated to destroy the party. The Labour Party is also facing similar issues. Peter Obi himself told me, ‘I don’t know what’s happening in the party I contested with,” he said. He urged the parties to unite to save the country, warning that it is descending towards a one-party system.
Continuing, he noted: “I no longer recognise the APC. No party organ has met in two years — no caucus, no NEC, nothing. You don’t even know if it is a one-man show; it’s a zero-man show.
“You cannot afford to have illiterates, semi-illiterates, and cunning people as your leaders. This is why we end up with the poor leadership we have today.
“The problems that led to the creation of the APC remain unresolved, but I no longer believe the APC is interested in addressing them. The distance between me and the party is widening.” He, however, insisted that he had no plans to leave the party. “I am not leaving the APC. I don’t have such plans,” el-Rufai declared.
Asked why he has been so hard on
the party lately, the former Federal Capital Territory Minister responded: “No, no no; I want them (APC) to change.” This has left many Nigerians wondering whether el-Rufai is just being true to himself or is an aggrieved party member seeking revenge against his perceived political enemies.
In March 2017, el-Rufai had pointedly accused the government of former president Muhammadu Buhari of drifting. In a leaked memo to the president, he stated that the APC administration under Buhari had failed to live up to the expectations of Nigerians who voted the party into power.
“In very blunt terms, Mr. President, our APC administration has not only failed to manage expectations of a populace that expected overnight ‘change’ but has failed to deliver even mundane matters of governance outside of our successes in fighting Boko Haram insurgency and corruption,” he said.
el-Rufai had acknowledged that Buhari inherited a bad situation, but said that the administration, having been in power for more than a year then, could not continue to blame the previous administration for the hardship in the country. He also took a swipe at Buhari’s manner of appointments and the performance of his appointees.
There is a strong perception that your inner circle or kitchen cabinet is incapable, unproductive and sectional. The quality and the undue concentration of key appointments to the North-East and exclusion of South-East are mentioned as evidence of this.
“There is a perception that your ministers, some of whom are competent and willing to make real contributions, have no clear mandate, instructions and access to you. Ministers are constitutional creations Mr. President and it is an aberration that they are expected to report to the Chief of Staff on policy matters.
“Mr. President, there is an emerging view in the media that you are neither leading the party nor the administration and those neither elected nor accountable appear to be in charge, and therefore the country is adrift,” he said.
Thus, the difference between what he is doing now and what he did during the Buhari administration is his rapport with opposition figures. He also seems to be very eager to respond to whoever tries to defend the APC and the Tinubu administration.
Earlier this year, he took part in a private meeting in Abuja with the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and allies of ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar.
The closed-door meeting, which was attended by an ex-presidential candidate and former Chief Security Officer to the late Gen. Sani Abacha, Maj. Hamza Al-Mustapha, and Atiku’s former spokesman, Otunba Segun Showunmi, took place at the SDP national secretariat. It sparked speculations about potential political realignments ahead of the 2027 general election. His recent call on opposition parties to set aside their differences and form a united front ahead of the 2027 election further suggests that he may be looking for new political allies cum platform, prompting the Presidency to accuse him of treachery.
In a post on his official X account, the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Communications, Daniel Bwala, said el-Rufai’s remarks would have been different if he had been in President Tinubu’s cabinet.
“My Senior brother if you were to be in the government and cabinet, would you have held and expressed the same position?
“History is replete with examples. It is a government you participated in its formation that you now want to unseat. Haba Mallam, a Ji soron Allah mana,” he tweeted.
But the former governor quickly
responded to Bwala. He wrote on X: “Good morning, #BwalaDaniel, I was cabinet minister 22 years ago and was clear to Asiwaju that I was not interested in any position in his future government. The pathetic manner all of you latter-day converts to the Tinubu government make an issue of something that I never wanted in the first place is perhaps a reflection of the level of your moral flexibility.
“If I had remained in the Tinubu government, I would say or do the same on the tragedy within a party I was a founder, and the government that emerged from it – first in private sessions with those concerned, and then go public if no remedial actions are taken. Go and check my public service record from 1998.
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